"Are the Authors of the Dungeon & Dragons Hardcover Adventures Blind to the Plight of DMs?"

Title in quotes, because it's the name of the article.

http://dmdavid.com/tag/are-the-auth...dcover-adventures-blind-to-the-plight-of-dms/

Interesting. I've only run Curse of Strahd, but I didn't experience any real difficulty with that. I think my main problem with prepublished adventures is adventure locations with a lot of described rooms which you have to read (to make sure they're not important) but which don't really add anything. In a house, for example, unless it's important that the broom closet and the bathroom be described, I'd rather they just left that to me. It does add to the prep time. And I've never been fan of "you're on the second floor landing, there's a door to the left and right" style stuff for something like a house -- I'd rather say "This is the second floor; there's a couple of bedrooms, a bathroom, and a locked room. What do you want to do?" rather than reveal each of those details individually. Naturally, I'd do so more flavourfully than that, and hold back anything important.

But I felt Strahd was pretty easy to run. Most APs I've found fairly easy (though our own ZEITGEIST really does require a lot of reading beforehand). Sandboxes require more pre-reading than linear adventures, as the latter you only have to read as far as your PCs will get today, while in a sandbox you have to be familiar with a lot.

I'm running a collection of short loosely-linked wilderness adventures for Adventure in Middle Earth (5E) right now, and that's sitting me great. I only have to read each adventure one at a time, and don't have to read the whole book just in case. Nice bite-sized chunks. That's definitely the easiest format for me. Well, other than just winging it, which is by far the easiest format for me (and usually has the best results).

Dunno. What do you think?

My immediate thoughts were:

1) the description-of-every-room thing is just evoking the classic feel of modules back in the day

2) in this case, "plight" ain't nuthin' but "Empowerment" misspelled.

Aka new dms have trouble running big adventures. Players should understand and follow the bleep bleep bleep plot hooks.

I've never run any published module without my own homebrew binder of notes to fit my style and my players. I understand the plight, though: Out of the Abyss was a nightmare to navigate with tons of material I never used. Strahd, on the other hand, has been easier to organize and very little space wasted. In the end, I buy modules because I don't have the time to write my own original material. So I took the article as a wishlist of things I wish future campaign modules would do:

* Sell me an adventure, not a sourcebook. I don't want 20 pages on drow politics when it's not the point (or likely outcome) of this adventure.
* Use your word count to craft for me unique encounters rather than reference me to a random encounter table.
* Organize by Chapter. Take your guidance from stuff that's worked really well before (e.g. Red Hand of Doom layout).
* Consider a free online supplement for that module that gives the stats and a page reference rather than "There's green slime." Refer to DMG chapter 5. That's a pain in the ass for me. I understand there's probably a license issue, but help a DM out.
* Make me care. You have people playtest these adventures, right? Make sure your hooks count.
* Give me unique content. Keep making up monsters (or convert some oldies) we've never seen in the Monster Manual. Same with magic items. Give me a unique mechanic for this campaign only, such as magic & resurrection rules for Strahd.

jasper said:

Aka new dms have trouble running big adventures. Players should understand and follow the bleep bleep bleep plot hooks.

Click to expand...

Exactly!

When people complain about flaws in OSX I always say "Aka new computer users have trouble hacking BSD."

When people complain about VW the "clean diesel" scandal I always say "Aka new drivers have trouble replacing engines."

And when people complain about dull kitchen knives I say "Aka new chefs have trouble forging 440-C."

People are such whiners these days.

Elfcrusher said:

People are such whiners these days.

Click to expand...

It's those durn millennials, all entitled, wanting everything to be 'easy' and 'fun' - even their games.

I feel this is a well written post from that blog, but I disagree with it.

I don't think I need published linear paths style adventures. I also think the community was asking for more open ended sandbox style adventures. The previous adventures in past editions were always too linear.

If you want linear, I would say DMs Guild is for that (or pathfinder). Maybe WotC can do a better job at pointing new DMs to other adventures besides Lost mines of Phandelver.

I don't like the layout of the hardcover adventures, which is why I don't actually own any of them.

The adventures have too many pages and it can be hard to find stuff sometimes. Also, I really hate the lack of inline monster statistics. The encounters aren't laid out so the DM can easily absorb them. I haven't gotten past the bad layout and presentation enough to actually see what the adventure itself is like.

guachi said:

I don't like the layout of the hardcover adventures, which is why I don't actually own any of them.

The adventures have too many pages and it can be hard to find stuff sometimes. Also, I really hate the lack of inline monster statistics. The encounters aren't laid out so the DM can easily absorb them. I haven't gotten past the bad layout and presentation enough to actually see what the adventure itself is like.

Click to expand...

Pretty much. It isn't the size, or amount of adventure material that puts me off its the organization/layout. I really hate maps bound in a hardback book, flipping back and forth between the content and the map. What's wrong with map booklets? The classic Temple of Elemental Evil was a huge mega-adventure but the maps were all in one handy booklet so that you could reference them while using the main book content.

That's not a loaded question if I ever saw one.